Governance Archaeology
Context
"The political scientist Federica Carugati and I (Nathan Schneider) have started a project we call “governance archaeology,” which catalogs largely pre-modern governance practices from around the world (Carugati and Schneider 2023). We were inspired by works that demonstrated how forms of collective governance are far more widespread and diverse in the history of human experience than Western culture has tended to imagine (Graeber and Wengrow 2021; Stasavage 2020). The Ethereum Foundation gave us our first major grant because people building blockchains have started recognizing, with each round of mishaps, how much they have to learn about historical governance designs. The possibilities people see as available to adopt always depend on the historical precedents they regard as legitimate and relevant. Carugati and I, along with our growing circle of collaborators, are trying to expand that palette of precedents."
More information
- Carugati, Federica, and Nathan Schneider. 2023. “Governance Archaeology: Research as Ancestry.” Daedalus 152 (1). https://www.amacad.org/p ublication/governance-archaeology-research-ancestry.